The present invention generally relates to a storage system and its management method, and in particular can be suitably applied to a storage system requiring the management of a plurality of files.
In recent years, numerous storage products for archiving contents (files or file groups) in the storage sector have been released.
Contents are managed using a path name (location information) configured from a logical volume (hereinafter referred to as a “volume”) provided from a storage area of a physical device, and the name of a folder or a file. In addition, contents are usually managed according to the combination of type management based on the file type or file/folder attribute, and time management based on time stamp information and the like.
Generally speaking, as a method of grouping and managing these contents, there is a method of grouping and managing such contents in volume basis or folder basis. Further, as a different management method, there is a method of performing hashing operation to the main matter (data) of the contents and managing such contents on a file basis based on the comparison of the operation results, and the contents can also be managed based on the combination of file type management and time management described above.
Incidentally, these management methods are a type of filtering technology, and factors (e.g. type or time) that are compared to and coincide with the match criteria set with certain factors are used in type management and time management. The collective designation of the combination of these conditions is known as a “policy.”
As methods for managing the contents according to the foregoing conventional systems, there are a management method in file basis, a management method on a folder basis, a management method in volume basis, and a management method combining the policies for performing filtering based on these file attributes and the like.
Further, as a method of grouping the foregoing contents and displaying the same to users in an easy-to-provide manner, there are the technologies disclosed in PC (WO) 2006-514377, PC (WO) 2006-521592 and PC (WO) 2006-521594. These patent documents disclose a method of grouping a plurality of contents across folders or volumes.